Volume 14, No 1, Spring 2019 ISSN 1932-1066 Breakthrough to Transcendence? Three Concepts of Inter-Cultural Philosophy (Leibniz, Hegel, Jaspers) Helmut Heit Tongji University, Shanghai [email protected] Abstract: After a brief discussion of G. W. Leibniz' and G. F. W. Hegel's disposition toward Chinese philosophy, the essay addresses Jaspers' idea of a breakthrough to transcendence in the Axial cultures and questions the relevance of its contribution for the historiography of philosophy. In view of two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, Jaspers took it upon himself to reconceptualize the idea of a world-history. The Western and Christian traditions could no longer serve as the central axis and needed to be replaced by a global perspective. Historians of philosophy who were dissatisfied with the practice of putting a sole focus on the Greco-Roman tradition in European culture later adopted this idea and challenged the implicit or explicit equation of Western philosophy as being philosophy proper. However, the attempts to establish a Jaspers inspired post-Eurocentric historiography of philosophy met a problem. Jaspers' existentialist assumptions are based on the concept of a global philosophia perennis, which in turn constitutes a universal and unifying standard for evaluation. Any such standard reintroduces what it sought to eliminate. Moreover, Jaspers' pluralism or globalism is limited to the presumed advanced civilizations of India, China, and the West, while other traditions such as African or Native American philosophy are still not being considered. And finally, the Western tradition as a continuous refinement of these Axial beginnings remains authoritative, ironically even its late modern post-colonial subversion. Keywords: Eurocentrism; intercultural philosophy; Western philosophy; Chinese philosophy; Axial Age; exoticism; universalism. The relations between Chinese and Western This World Congress of Philosophy 2018 taken by philosophers are a good and promising a case in point itself is a strong indication of it. The interest of Western of intercultural and transcultural discourse.1 When philosophers in professing their philosophy in China deliberating what role Chinese thinking plays in is great, perhaps greater than taking a genuine interest Western philosophy, one is faced with several difficulties in Chinese philosophy as such. A growing number with regard to the identification of the scope and extent of Western philosophers regularly travel to China of these two concepts. Different funding agencies on to discuss with their Chinese colleagues Immanuel the part of both of China and the West support the Kant, John Dewey, or Martin Heidegger; or aesthetics, cooperation among and mobility of philosophers. metaphysics, and ethics. Nevertheless, one can also observe a certain 1 A version of this essay was presented at the Eighth asymmetry in this area, inasmuch as, according to my International Jaspers Conference, Beijing, August 2018. observation, Western academic philosophers travel Helmut Heit, "Breakthrough to Transcendence?—Three Concepts of Inter-Cultural Philosophy (Leibniz, Hegel, Jaspers)," Existenz 14/1 (2019), 107-114 First posted 12-23-2019 108 Helmut Heit much more frequently to China as visiting professors expressed his strong and lasting interest in China in and conference participants, while, conversely, Chinese numerous letters and writings. A significant upshot philosophy professors are less present in Europe or the of this interest is his Novissima Sinica Historiam Nostri United States. With respect to students, this imbalance Temporis Illustratura.3 As the title implies, this annotated is even more prominent. While relatively few European edition of his correspondence with various Jesuits or American students acquire a significant part of their offers a rich and illustrated collection of news received philosophical education in China, significantly more from and about China. David Mungello elaborates that, Chinese students and postgraduates spend lengthy in 1689, Leibniz used the opportunity to communicate periods of time at Western universities. A similar with the Jesuit priest, and China expert, Claudio Filippo asymmetry can also be observed with respect to Grimaldi, whom he had met in Rome and with whom making translations of philosophical literature. Nearly he henceforth continued an exchange of letters. Leibniz all philosophy of Western origin is available in Chinese is interested in the peculiarities of Chinese language translations, including recent and contemporary and scripture, as well as in mathematics and logic. He contributions. Certainly, the classical texts of Chinese knew an abbreviated version of the Book of Changes philosophy are translated into most Western European having read its first translation into Latin by the Jesuit languages, especially from the beginning of the Richard Couplet in 1687. In the hexagrams of this book, twentieth century onwards. But these translations he sees an anticipation of his binary number system almost solely cover the classical Chinese tradition. and therefore concludes, probably incorrectly, to be The author of the only introduction to contemporary confronted with a highly developed ancient Chinese Chinese philosophy in German seems right if he points mathematics.4 Due to China's long and continuous out: "Contemporary Chinese philosophy is largely history, Leibniz assumed that its treasure of experimental unknown even with philosophers and sinologists. If and empirical knowledge must be much larger than the anything, ancient Chinese philosophy enjoys a certain European one and he reacts—quite philosophically— amount of attention."2 It seems as if China is listening with curious enthusiasm by rhetorically asking: "What to modern Western philosophy, whereas the West is could be more desirable to an interested person than still quite often ignoring the contributions of Chinese to see and hear a man, who can open to us the hidden philosophy. In what follows, I will exemplarily discuss treasures of the far East and the remote secrets of so the reception of Chinese thought by three German many centuries."5 Leibniz continues by asking thirty philosophers: Gottfried W. Leibniz, Georg W. F. Hegel questions, including, "What can we hope for from a key and Karl Jaspers, with the objective to contribute to a to the Chinese characters?" Or, "How do the Chinese better understanding of this imbalance and asymmetry. distill alcohol equivalent to ours from rice?" However, Each one of them offers a different modality for doing his open curiosity is embedded within a universalist intercultural philosophy that I call curious exoticism, framework, as becomes obvious from a later note, he self-confident universalism, and critical Eurocentrism wrote in Summer 1689 after his conversations with respectively. Despite their merits, however, each of Grimaldi. The Chinese people, he notes, are a "profit- these modes remains within a Western framework by oriented type of people" who observe "heaven only for virtue of which they contribute to that asymmetry. 3 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Novissima Sinica Historiam The Curious Exoticism of Nostri Temporis Illustratura, 1697, Bayerische Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Staatsbibliothek digital https://reader.digitale- sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb11098678.html. The encounter with Chinese thinking in German 4 David E. Mungello, "How Central to Leibniz's philosophy evokes different forms of exotic curiosity Philosophy was China?" in Das Neueste über China: G. and open-mindedness to the foreign. This friendly W. Leibnizens Novissima Sinica von 1697, eds. Wenchao curious openness can be well illustrated by using the Li and Hans Poser, Stuttgart, DE: Steiner Verlag 2000, example of Leibniz, who over several decades has pp. 57-67, here pp. 59 f. 5 Gottfried W. Leibniz, "Leibniz an Claudio Filippo Grimaldi S. J., Rom, 19. Juli 1689," transl. Malte-Ludolf 2 Fabian Heubel, Chinesische Gegenwartsphilosophie zur Babin, Digitale Edition, Faksimile 3, http://dokumente. Einführung, Hamburg, DE: Junius 2016, p. 11 (my leibnizcentral.de/index.php?id=376. [Henceforth translation). cited as CFG] http://www.existenz.us Volume 14, No. 1, Spring 2019 Breakthrough to Transcendence?—Three Concepts of Inter-Cultural Philosophy (Leibniz, Hegel, Jaspers) 109 the sake of earning a living, not for the sake of the glory time challenges Western, especially Christian notions of truth" (CFG 377). Leibniz' philosophical universalism of singularity. However, the underlying universalist implies that Chinese thought either contributes to a rationalism seems to assume that whatever is good and unified human quest for the glory of truth or it remains right in the intellectual endeavors of the most varied ultimately insignificant. In their attitude to the European times and cultures is being absorbed in the unity of astronomers, Leibniz writes, they displayed reason, while the highest revelation of this reasoning a malevolent attitude, and as soon as they see is expressed in Wolff and his understanding of his that the calculations [of the fathers] are in any contemporary philosophy. In this regard, Leibniz' and tiny contradiction to the findings in the sky, they Wolff's curious exoticism refer to a position which is immediately exclaim: The astronomy of the Europeans detailed in Hegel. is deceptive, let us return to our own. They see the splinter in the eye of others and do not care about the The Self-Confident Universalism of beam in their own.